Google Maps Hacks

Book Description

Want to find every pizza place within a 15-mile radius? Where thedog parks are in a new town? The most central meeting place foryour class, club or group of friends? The cheapest gas stations ona day-to-day basis? The location of convicted sex offenders in anarea to which you may be considering moving? The applications,serendipitous and serious, seem to be infinite, as developers findever more creative ways to add to and customize the satelliteimages and underlying API of Google Maps.

Written by Schuyler Erle and Rich Gibson, authors of the popularMapping Hacks, Google Maps Hacks shares dozens oftricks for combining the capabilities of Google Maps with your owndatasets. Such diverse information as apartment listings, crimereporting or flight routes can be integrated with Google'ssatellite imagery in creative ways, to yield new and usefulapplications.

The authors begin with a complete introduction to the "standard"features of Google Maps. The adventure continues with 60 useful andinteresting mapping projects that demonstrate ways developers haveadded their own features to the maps. After that's given you ideasof your own, you learn to apply the techniques and tools to addyour own data to customize and manipulate Google Maps. Even Googleseems to be tacitly blessing what might be seen as unauthorizeduse, but maybe they just know a good thing when they see one.

With the tricks and techniques you'll learn from Google MapsHacks, you'll be able to adapt Google's satellite map featureto create interactive maps for personal and commercial applicationsfor businesses ranging from real estate to package delivery to homeservices, transportation and more. Includes a foreword by GoogleMaps tech leads, Jens and Lars Rasmussen.